The Radium Girls: The Glow Sold as a Miracle and the Deaths Given Another Name

In 1917, in Orange, New Jersey, teenagers sat at long tables and painted tiny numbers on watch dials with a luminous mixture. The job was clean, paid well for young immigrant women, and looked like a safe piece of modern industry. At night the watches glowed because of radium, a new element that newspapers praised as a cancer cure and a sign of scientific progress.

In 1917, in Orange, New Jersey, teenagers sat at long tables and painted tiny numbers on watch dials with a luminous mixture. The job was clean, paid well for young immigrant women, and looked like a safe piece of modern industry. At night the watches glowed because of radium, a new element that newspapers praised as a cancer cure and a sign of scientific progress.

In 1917, in Orange, New Jersey, teenagers sat at long tables and painted tiny numbers on watch dials with a luminous mixture. The job was clean, paid well for young immigrant women, and looked like a safe piece of modern industry. At night the watches glowed because of radium, a new element that newspapers praised as a cancer cure and a sign of scientific progress.

In 1917, in Orange, New Jersey, teenagers sat at long tables and painted tiny numbers on watch dials with a luminous mixture. The job was clean, paid well for young immigrant women, and looked like a safe piece of modern industry. At night the watches glowed because of radium, a new element that newspapers praised as a cancer cure and a sign of scientific progress.